Tag Archives: passwords

If you are anything like me, you have numerous passwords that you have to keep track of. I can also safely assume, that unless you are in the vast minority or people, you also have autofill/remember passwords turned on for all of your accounts. I’m here to tell you that there is an easy way to remember your passwords so that using these convenient insecurities can be avoided.

The practice that I use and advocate for remembering and creating passwords is called The Roman Room. I’ll admit, this concept is not my own. I’ve borrowed it from a TV show called Leverage. I found it to be a neat concept, and as such I have employed it since. The practice works as follows: Imagine a room, it can be factual or fictional. Now imagine specific, detailed items that you can either “place” in the room, or that exist in the room in real life. This place could be your bedroom, your family’s RV, really anywhere that you have a vivid memory of, and can recall easily. I suggest thinking of items that you know very well, as this will make describing them later easier. Something like a piece of artwork, a unique piece of furniture, or a vacation souvenir. Something that makes a regular appearance in the same spot or something that has a permanence about it.

Now comes the challenging part: creating the password. The difficulty comes in creating a password that fulfills the password requirements at hand. This technique is most useful when you have the option to have a longer password (16+ characters), as that adds to more security, as well as allows for a more memorable/unique password. Let’s say for example that I often store my bicycle by hanging it on my bedroom wall. It’s a black and red mountain bike, with 7 speeds. I could conjure up the password “Black&RedMountain7Sp33d”.

Image: bicyclehabitat.com

Alternatively, I could create a password that describes that state of the bike opposed to its appearance. This example reminds me of how the bike looks when its hung on the wall, it looks like its floating. Which reminds me of that scene from ET. I could then create the password “PhoneHomeB1cycle”, or something along those lines. This technique is just something that I find useful when I comes time to create a new password, and as a means to remember them easily that also prevents me from being lazy using the same password again, and again. Though this method doesn’t always generate the most secure password (by that I mean gibberish-looking password), it is a means to help you create better passwords and remember them without having to store them behind yet another password (in a password manager). What good is a password if you can’t remember or have to write it down?